JUDAIZATION 251
We may illustrate the implausibility of Weiss’s ascription of stable meaning
to the iconography by examining his treatment of one section of the pavement.
His interpretation of the panels drawn from the Abraham stories as suggesting
God’s promise to Israel, and thus his interpretation of the pavement as a
whole, depends heavily on his identification of the heavily damaged panel
nearest the narthex as the angels’ visit to Abraham and Sarah .It must be
admitted that this identification, suggested to Weiss by the juxtaposition of the
angels’ visit and the binding of Isaac in the apse mosaic of the Church of San
Vitale in Ravenna, is very attractive .The only readily construable piece of the
panel shows the top of a hooded, almost certainly female head (which is
almost identical to the [female] personification of Winter in the zodiac panel),
situated in a rectangular structure .Although this structure seems more like a
doorway than a tent flap (as required by the biblical story, and in contrast to
the more obviously tentlike entrance Sarah stands in at Ravenna),^26 there is
only one other biblical story in which such a scene would be expected, that
I can think of—the story of Jephthah and his daughter, that is, the other
biblical narrative, aside from the binding of Isaac, of human sacrifice .Though
Jephthah’s daughter, like the female figure on the pavement but unlike Sarah,
lived in a house, not a tent, I hesitate to suggest that the mosaicist was trying
to represent this strange and not readily interpretable biblical tale, though the
possibility should perhaps not be excluded; nor should the possibility that the
damaged scene is not drawn from a biblical story.
This fragmentary scene is, as already suggested, crucial to Weiss’s interpreta-
tion of the pavement as a whole .Without the angelic visitation, there is no
divine promise, only a scene of primeval sacrifice or of a righteous man’s
submission to God’s will .(Indeed, even the angelic visitation should perhaps
be understood as an image of offering.) Plausible as Weiss’s identification of
the scene on the fragmentary panel is (and he must wish it was more than
merely plausible), his interpretation of the juxtaposed scenes of the angelic
visitation and the binding of Isaac, though perfectly acceptable in itself, strik-
ingly contradicts his own assumptions about how the art conveyed meaning.
The same scenes, for example, must have had a different sense in Ravenna,
where they constitute part of an utterly different kind of decorative program.
And how does the absence of the “promise” theme affect the meaning of the
1956), passim, especially plates; see also R .Gordon, “Franz Cumont and the Doctrine of Mithra-
ism,” in J .R .Hinnells, ed .,Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of
Mithraic Studies(Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1975), pp. 215–48; R. Beck,
“Mithraism since Franz Cumont,”ANRW2.17.4, pp. 2002–15 (Berlin: DeGruyer, 1981).
(^26) A wall mosaic unambiguously depicting this same scene from the Church of Santa Maria
Maggiore in Rome offers some support to Weiss’s interpretation, for here Sarah stands in an
entrance whose framework is rectangular, with the fabric hanging from the transverse of the
doorframe held open by cords; see the photograph in Goodenough,Jewish Symbols3 (1953)
fig .1.